Privacy advocates were dealt a major blow on July 18, when a federal judge in New York ruled that law enforcement has the legal authority to search the entire email account of an unnamed individual who police believe was involved in a money laundering scheme.

Google is now legally required to hand over the entire contents of the unnamed individual’s Gmail account — including all emails sent, received and drafted, all contacts, and other information — to federal prosecutors.

In his 23-page ruling, U.S. Magistrate Judge Gabriel Gorenstein wrote that email accounts should be treated like hard drives when it comes to search and seizure principles. In other words, Gorenstein believes law enforcement should be able to go through an individual’s entire email account if prosecutors can demonstrate probable cause showing a “sufficient chance of finding some needles in the computer haystack.”

“For example, in a drug investigation, it might be obvious based on information from an informant or other source that emails referring to the purchase or importation of ‘dolls’ refers to cocaine, but investigators might only learn as the investigation unfolds that a seemingly innocuous email referring to purchase of ‘potatoes’ also refers to a cocaine shipment,” the judge wrote.

This decision is significant because U.S. courts have historically ruled against federal prosecutors’ requests to search an email account in order to find incriminating evidence, citing the Fourth Amendment, which protects Americans from unreasonable search and seizure.

Given that there has been a rise in the number of requests from law enforcement officials in recent years for access to information hosted by companies such as Google and Yahoo, privacy advocates have expressed concern that this case may affect future money laundering and other financial crime cases, or even other types of crimes, as Gorenstein wrote in his ruling that those courts that did not rule in favor of law enforcement ignored all case law giving police the legal ability to comb through paper documents to determine whether a crime had been committed.

Hanni Fakhoury, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said Judge Gorenstein is essentially saying that the Fourth Amendment grants police officers legal room to search irrelevant data in order to find relevant data. But the problem many privacy advocates see with this interpretation, especially in the Digital Age, is that law enforcement is able to retain large amounts of data for an extended period of time.

Gorenstein’s interpretation of the Fourth Amendment is also shocking, given that just last month the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that police cannot just search an individual’s cellphone without first obtaining a warrant.

“The Supreme Court’s decision reinforces the notion that digital data can’t be equated with physical items like papers because it contains so much more information, in terms of both volume and quality,” Fakhoury said. “When police enter a home to search for, say a shotgun, they can’t look at places where the weapon is unlikely to be found.

“But these broad digital searches allow the government to search through everything because the government believes the evidence could be anywhere. So that’s problematic in my mind,” he said.

Glenda Toma agrees. In a piece in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, she says that the “diminishment of digital privacy is a startling trend.”

“When a warrant is authorized for a physical entity, such as a house or a car, there are stipulations as to what can be searched and where,” Toma pointed out. “It has been rare for a judge to grant a so-called general warrant, or the unrestricted permission to search and seize, since it potentially contravenes the Fourth Amendment. So why do these rules not apply to digital privacy?”

In his ruling, Gorenstein did not outline a specific timeframe in which law enforcement officials would be able to search the individual’s emails, nor did the judge say how long law enforcement would have access to the email account — reasons why privacy advocates view this case as just one more reason why regulating digital privacy urgently needs to be addressed from a legal standpoint.

]]>http://www.mintpressnews.com/youve-got-mail-judge-grants-feds-unrestricted-access-to-gmail-account/194546/feed/49Marijuana Legalization To Be On The Ballot In A Maine City And Oregonhttp://www.mintpressnews.com/marijuana-legalization-to-be-on-the-ballot-in-a-maine-city-and-oregon/194492/
http://www.mintpressnews.com/marijuana-legalization-to-be-on-the-ballot-in-a-maine-city-and-oregon/194492/#commentsFri, 25 Jul 2014 10:00:21 +0000http://www.mintpressnews.com/?p=194492Come November, Alaska, Oregon, and South Portland, Maine, voters will decide whether to legalize marijuana for adults.

Anthony Johnson, director of New Approach Oregon, hands boxes of petition signatures to an elections worker on Thursday, June 26, 2014 in Salem, Ore. New Approach is seeking a statewide vote on legalizing marijuana in the November election. (Chad Garland/AP)

It’s official: Voters in Oregon and South Portland, Maine, will decide this fall whether to follow in the footsteps of Colorado and Washington state and legalize marijuana for adults 21 and older in limited quantities.

News that voters in Oregon had gathered the some 88,500 signatures needed to place the legalization measure on the November ballot was announced on Tuesday, thereby ensuring that at least two states will vote to legalize personal use of the substance this fall. (Alaska’s legalization ballot measure was approved in February.)

The announcement from city officials in South Portland, Maine, that a citizen initiative to legalize marijuana for adults qualified for the November ballot came on Wednesday, after more than 1,500 signatures supporting the measure were turned in to the city.

On Aug. 4, the City Council could decide whether to implement the measure — which would allow those 21 and older to legally possess up to one ounce of marijuana — or let voters decide this fall.

Legalization advocates don’t appear to be too worried about the measure passing if it is put to a vote this fall. David Boyer, political director of the Marijuana Policy Project’s Maine chapter, said, “Voters were very receptive during the signature drive.”

“Most people agree law enforcement officials have more important things to do than punish adults for using a substance that is less harmful than alcohol,” Boyer said. “If this measure passes, police can use their discretion to stop arresting adults for simple marijuana possession.”

He also encouraged the City Council members to support the measure, saying, “This is an opportunity for council members to demonstrate leadership on [marijuana].”

“It’s time to move beyond the status quo of prohibition and start making progress,” he said.

Under the citywide measure, marijuana would still be illegal at the state level, so consumption or display of marijuana in public would be prohibited, but Boyer said the measure sends a message to state officials that legalization is something voters in Maine want.

Though the Marijuana Policy Project was involved in the legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington state, and is part of the efforts to legalize the drug this fall in Oregon, Alaska and in South Portland, Maine, not all of the marijuana legalization measures are the same.

For example, Oregon’s marijuana industry would be governed by the state’s Liquor Control Commission, and would allow adults to possess up to eight ounces of marijuana at a time and grow up to four plants. Colorado’s legalization law, meanwhile, allows adults to possess up to one ounce and grow no more than three plants.

Oregon is expected to earn about $35 in taxes from each ounce of marijuana sold. The money would be used to fund schools, law enforcement, mental health programs and drug treatment programs.

While some — particularly those in law enforcement — may be concerned about the larger amount of marijuana adults would legally be able to possess, Major Neill Franklin (Ret.), executive director of the marijuana legalization advocacy group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, has voiced support for the move.

“As a man who spent more than 30 years in law enforcement, I think this measure will be tremendously beneficial to the state of Oregon,” Franklin said. “Lower crime, greater tax revenue, millions poured into local economies — it happened in Colorado, and it can happen here.”

]]>http://www.mintpressnews.com/marijuana-legalization-to-be-on-the-ballot-in-a-maine-city-and-oregon/194492/feed/3Is The EPA Doing Enough To Stop Corporate Polluters?http://www.mintpressnews.com/epa-enough-stop-corporate-polluters-2/194476/
http://www.mintpressnews.com/epa-enough-stop-corporate-polluters-2/194476/#commentsThu, 24 Jul 2014 18:53:53 +0000http://www.mintpressnews.com/?p=194476Due to “the reality of budget cuts and staffing reductions,” the EPA has had to make hard choices, including the choice to only pursue “high impact cases.”

New U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy, center, reacts while greeting Bob Valair, director of energy and environmental management for Staples Inc., left, after delivering a speech at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Mass., Tuesday, July 30, 2013.

A new investigative report, published by The Crime Report, alleges that the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Justice often fail to hold corporations criminally accountable for violating environmental laws, including knowingly discharging raw sewage into water or killing a bald eagle.

As Graham Kates, author of the report, which was partly funded by the Fund for Investigative Journalism, wrote, “Every violation can technically be treated as a crime, but federal environmental law gives agencies discretion to pursue civil or administrative charges instead.”

“In fiscal year 2013, the EPA’s Criminal Enforcement Division launched 297 investigations. In 2012, 320 investigations were opened,” but Kates noted that “the total [number of investigations] has steadily decreased since 2001.”

A similar report from AllGov said that although there are more than 64,000 facilities in the United States run by corporations that have a history of violating U.S. environmental laws, fewer than 0.5 percent have ever faced prosecution or criminal charges for violating environmental laws.

“That’s because the government has consistently preferred to take administrative or civil actions against corporate polluters, even though laws like the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act make it possible to charge executives criminally during investigations,” wrote Noel Brinkerhoff and Steve Straehley, the report’s authors.

However, an EPA spokesperson told MintPress News that allegations of the EPA and DOJ choosing not to criminally prosecute companies for violating environmental laws “do not square with the facts.”

“In Fiscal Year 2013, EPA’s criminal cases assessed more than $1.5 billion in criminal fines and restitution, and more than $3 billion in court-ordered environmental projects to benefit communities, the largest amounts ever for a single year,” the spokesperson said.

“We charged 281 defendants and recorded 161 years of incarceration, the strongest year in criminal sentencing since ’05. Big cases like the Deepwater Horizon disaster and Wal-Mart’s illegal handling of pesticides and hazardous waste resulted in nationwide reforms and billions of dollars to help affected communities.”

With only 38 prosecutors in the DOJ’s Environmental Crimes Section and 200 agents in the EPA’s Criminal Enforcement Division, the government doesn’t have the manpower or the financial means to pursue criminal cases against every single company and individual found violating environmental laws. But it will use its limited resources to prosecute the companies blatantly disregarding environmental laws, especially in the name of profit.

Another EPA spokesperson, Jennifer Colaizzi, told Kates that due to “the reality of budget cuts and staffing reductions,” the EPA has had to make hard choices, including the choice to only pursue “high impact cases.”

Financial power

According to David Wilma, a former EPA criminal investigator who also used to work as an investigator for the Drug Enforcement Agency, part of the reason more companies are not criminally prosecuted is because it’s easier to get people to testify against bosses who work in the criminal underbelly than in the corporate world.

“It’s at least as hard to flip somebody in a corporation as it is in a Colombian drug cartel, maybe harder,” Wilma said. “It’s hard to get somebody to flip against a paycheck.”

Part of the concern with ratting out a boss for an environmental violation is that the companies that run mines, refineries, processing plants, etc., are often operating in small towns where they are the town’s main, if not sole, employer.

Many people in these towns worry that if they pursue cases against these employers for environmental concerns, the company may pack up and go, creating an economic disaster for the town’s residents. This is why cases like Citgo Petroleum Corp.’s violation of the Clean Air Act, in which residents spoke up and shared their concerns, are so rare.

In the Citgo case, a Texas jury found the company guilty in 2007 of knowingly allowing the known-carcinogen benzene, as well as other toxic fumes, into the air in the town of Corpus Christi, Texas, for about a decade.

Residents of Hillcrest, Texas, who lived near the refinery where the chemicals were emitted, reported that the chemicals were stored in roofless tanks. This allowed the chemicals to drift into the air and be absorbed into everything — clothes, food, skin and eyes — and resulted in mysterious illnesses and physical symptoms, such as headaches, dizziness, scratchy throats and nausea.

Many residents were unable to sell their homes after real estate values plummeted because the amount of toxic chemicals like benzene found in the air was around 10 times the legal limit. Of the more than 300 people who came forward, saying they were negatively impacted by the chemical, many were not in the financial position to simply move or hire their own legal representation, as they were predominantly low-income families.

While many applauded the DOJ and EPA’s efforts to hold the company responsible for its environmental crimes, U.S. District Court Judge John D. Rainey didn’t sentence the company until February 2014 for violating the Clean Air Act — seven years after the company was found guilty. Despite prosecutors’ pleas for the company to pay around $2 billion for its violations, Rainey fined the company a little more than $2 million.

He also ruled against restitution for the victims, as Rainey said they failed to provide thorough evidence that their illnesses were a direct result of the chemical leaks at the Citgo plant.

Prosecutors cautioned that the fine wasn’t enough to prevent Citgo from continuing to violate environmental laws, as the company reported around $1 billion in profits due to its illegal operation. Neither Citgo nor the DOJ appealed Judge Rainey’s decision, which Bill Miller, a former EPA lawyer who worked with the Justice Department on the Citgo prosecution and has since retired, said sends a message that corporations are too big to punish.

Miller further explained that environmental crime cases are often settled out of court, so when the government does successfully prosecute a company, they should “aggressively punish environmental violators.”

“If you’re not going to do anything about it then it behooves every large corporation who gets caught violating a complex statute like Clean Air Act to go to trial and hide behind complexity of it,” Miller said. “If I was a company like Citgo and I got caught doing something like this again, I’d litigate it.”

Mark Roberts, an attorney and international policy advisor with the Environmental Investigation Agency, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. and London, agreed with Miller that corporations willing and able to spend millions of dollars to ensure they won’t be labeled as a “criminal,” but said these companies often spend more on legal fees fighting these charges than they would have had to spend for violating the law.

Wilma, the former EPA criminal investigator, noted that the typical corporate case takes between two to three-and-a-half years, compared to two months for small businesses, which adds to the list of reasons of why it’s hard to convict a large company.

Setting a precedent

Not every company is able to shake off the criminal charges for violating environmental laws, even those with large bank accounts. As a DOJ spokesperson pointed out to MintPress, not all criminal prosecutions result in time spent behind bars, before adding that legally a “fine” is indicative of a criminal prosecution, while a “penalty” is a civil charge.

For example, in the case of British Petroleum, the company ended up agreeing to a record-breaking $4.5 billion criminal settlement after its Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20, 2010.

As a result of the explosion, 11 BP workers were killed, 17 employees were injured, and more than 200 million gallons of crude oil spilled across about 16,000 miles of coastline in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. In addition to the historic settlement, which was negotiated by the DOJ and BP, four company officials were also hit with criminal charges, including Kurt Mix of Katy, Texas.

Mix, 50 years old at the time, was charged with two counts of obstruction of justice for intentionally deleting more than 300 text messages proving that the amount of oil that spilled into the Gulf of Mexico was much larger than the company was reporting and that the company’s efforts to contain the oil leak had failed.

Before Mix was charged, a federal judge presiding over the case in New Orleans had considered asking BP to pay a $7.8 billion civil settlement to a committee of plaintiffs, but the new evidence proving the company was covering up a crime changed things. Mix was charged with two counts of obstruction of justice and was allegedly fired by BP. If found guilty on both counts, he faces up to 20 years in prison and a total fine of $500,000.

Ultimately, BP pled guilty to multiple counts of federal criminal violations and paid the DOJ around $4.5 billion in fines. BP was also ordered to pay for cleanup efforts in the Gulf of Mexico and to pay some $8.5 billion BP to those affected by the spill. The oil giant and repeat environmental law offender also lost its ability to bid on U.S. government contracts for five years.

However, in March this year, two years into BP’s five-year contract suspension, the EPA announced that BP was eligible to contract with the U.S. federal government once again.

While the announcement came as a shock to many, as Rena Steinzor, president of the Center for Progressive Reform and law professor at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law, told MintPress in March, the EPA is often forced to backtrack on its decisions due to pressure from conservatives and right-leaning political groups such as the Tea Party, who argue that strict regulations are the source of the country’s financial troubles.

Additionally, Steinzor speculated that the EPA was likely forced to allow the feds to contract with BP again because of political pressure put on the agency by British Prime Minister David Cameron. She said Cameron is concerned about BP’s success because the energy giant helps fund British pension programs.

Steinzor also shared that one of BP’s largest and most loyal customers is the U.S. Defense Logistics Agency, which reportedly purchased $2 billion worth of oil from BP when the agency was fully deployed in Afghanistan a few years ago.

Environmental criminology

Although the EPA has recently been accused by conservatives of overreaching and by liberals of not doing enough, David Uhlmann, director of the environmental law and policy program at the University of Michigan and former chief of the DOJ’s Environmental Crime Section, has argued that the EPA often cites companies for environmental violations, but many of those cases don’t become well known unless deaths or explosions occur.

When environmental violations intensify, Uhlmann said, prosecutors and government regulators get involved. This is why he said the DOJ prosecutes companies more for criminal environmental violations than any other area of corporate crime, and also why there is a growing number of people studying environmental criminology.

However, Uhlmann told PBS’ “Frontline” that criminally prosecuting companies and individuals for environmental crimes is tricky because there needs to be proof that officials at the company knew there was a violation and that they were either carrying out the action themselves or failed to take the necessary steps to prevent the violation.

Instead of prosecuting a few companies, Uhlmann suggested that the federal government’s time and money would be better spent in efforts to enforce environmental laws throughout the country before people are killed or explosions occur.

But not all environmental lawyers agree that the EPA and DOJ should stop prosecuting big cases like those against Citgo, BP and Wal-Mart. Instead, some, like Melissa Jarrell, an associate professor of criminal justice at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi who helped represent Hillcrest residents affected by the Citgo chemical leaks, argue that there needs to be an entirely separate court for environmental crime cases.

“You can’t treat them as you do with other cases,” Jarrell said. “If you’re trying to follow regular sentencing guidelines, you can’t do that … you need to have a different system, particularly for the corporate cases.”

Jarrell has a point. Earlier this month, the Texas Attorney General’s Office explained that since state criminal statutes were stronger than federal ones, the state opted to pursue a case against the Fort Worth-based XTO Energy Inc., a natural gas company accused of improperly disposing of hazardous wastewater.

The EPA was reportedly ready to file criminal charges against the company, which is a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil Corp., but as Senior Executive Deputy Attorney General Linda Dale Hoffa wrote in a brief, the federal agency didn’t have enough evidence to criminally charge XTO under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

The state of Texas, however, has a law that would allow the company to be held criminally responsible for dumping about 50,000 gallons of wastewater containing barium, strontium, chlorides and total dissolved solids. While the EPA has left it up to Texas to hold the company criminally responsible, the federal agency held XTO responsible for civil violations and agreed to a $100,000 civil penalty settlement with the company.

Slowly coming to power

Part of the complexity of environmental law cases is related to the fact that it wasn’t until 1970, when the Clean Air Act became law, that it was even possible for the agency to criminally prosecute individuals and companies who polluted water, land or air.

Though most of the violations would only result in misdemeanor sanctions, the law was seen as a step toward ensuring that environmental laws were enforced and taken seriously.

For example, after Allied Chemical Corporation dumped the pesticide kepone in the James River in Virginia in 1975, and the owner of an unnamed Kentucky-based company and two of his employees were caught dumping pesticide wastes and raw sewage into the Ohio River, the EPA was able to hold the corporations and individuals criminally responsible for violating environmental laws, which led to the evolution of the federal environmental crimes program in the 1980s.

The EPA’s Criminal Enforcement Special Agents program was officially established in 1982 and was granted full law enforcement authority by Congress in 1988, meaning these agents could investigate cases, collect evidence, conduct forensic analyses and provide legal guidance on cases perceived as a threat to public health and the environment.

While the EPA has federal authority, the environmental agency says that there are still some common environmental concerns handled by state or local authorities, such as the improper disposal of vehicle or lawnmower oils, molds and sewage in a person’s yard.

Given that the EPA’s ability to hold companies responsible for environmental violations is so new, cases like those involving Citgo and BP could be used by EPA officials to argue that Congress should grant the agency greater authority to ensure that ecological and wildlife resources are protected.

]]>http://www.mintpressnews.com/epa-enough-stop-corporate-polluters-2/194476/feed/3New Hampshire Celebrates Bittersweet Anniversary Of Medical Marijuana Programhttp://www.mintpressnews.com/new-hampshire-celebrates-bittersweet-anniversary-of-medical-marijuana-program/194410/
http://www.mintpressnews.com/new-hampshire-celebrates-bittersweet-anniversary-of-medical-marijuana-program/194410/#commentsThu, 24 Jul 2014 10:00:31 +0000http://www.mintpressnews.com/?p=194410Officials in the Granite State are still stonewalling on the implementation of medical marijuana legislation signed into law last year.

Wednesday marked the bittersweet one year anniversary of New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan signing the state’s medical marijuana legislation into law.

One year later, though, and that law has yet to take effect.

Instead of rejoicing, medical marijuana patients and advocates “celebrated” the first anniversary of the state’s decision to legalize the drug by holding a demonstration to raise awareness for the delays the state’s medical marijuana program has faced. They also delivered a list of grievances and requests to Hassan’s office.

“Patients have nothing to celebrate on the first anniversary of New Hampshire’s medical marijuana law,” said Matt Simon, the Goffstown-based New England political director for the Marijuana Policy Project.

“Implementation of the program has been beset by needless delays, and people with debilitating conditions still face criminal penalties for possessing any amount of marijuana,” he said. “This situation is unacceptable.”

Hassan may have signed New Hampshire’s “Therapeutic Use of Cannabis” program into law on July 23, 2013, but as Simon noted, throughout the past year, medical marijuana patients in the state have continued to be arrested and criminally prosecuted for using the drug.

No one in the state has been given a patient ID card. Per the instruction of the state Attorney General’s office, the Department of Health and Human Services has been instructed to not issue patient ID cards until the first dispensary opens. Without an ID card, however, patients have no legal protections.

The problem with waiting to issue ID cards until the first dispensary opens is that the DHHS has not yet produced even a draft of rules for how dispensaries can legally operate in the state — in other words, there are no plans to open a dispensary anytime soon, making the law sort of meaningless for patients who have yet to experience legal relief.

Since patients are not able to cultivate their own medicine at home, they are still forced to buy their medicine on the black market. Further, marijuana is not decriminalized in the state, meaning instead of treating minor marijuana possession as a civil infraction that carries a small fine, patients often find themselves behind bars for possessing the substance.

Even if the law would have been fully implemented by now, many medical marijuana patients and advocates point out that the law is not friendly to patients. This may explain why the medical marijuana advocacy group Americans for Safe Access gave New Hampshire’s medical marijuana program a “D.”

As the Marijuana Policy Project notes in a list of patients’ 10 grievances with New Hampshire’s program — or lack thereof — part of the issue with implementing the program is related to the fact that there isn’t a patient representative on the advisory council that was established to help implement the program.

In fact, the first person who was appointed to the council was Tuftonboro Chief of Police Andrew Shagoury. He was the leading opponents to allowing patients access to cannabis, and he continues to oppose marijuana legalization, even for medicinal use.

MPP notes that while a patient was appointed to the advisory council, that individual has not attended a single meeting and doesn’t appear willing to “represent the interests of patients.”

Meanwhile, another concern is that New Hampshire doesn’t allow those with post-traumatic stress disorder to register as a medical marijuana patient, and the state actually requires patients to have both a listed symptom and a listed condition to qualify.

“We’re fed up with state officials’ stonewalling,” Simon said. “It’s time to start listening to the seriously ill people the medical marijuana law was intended to help.”

]]>http://www.mintpressnews.com/new-hampshire-celebrates-bittersweet-anniversary-of-medical-marijuana-program/194410/feed/18“Startling” Number Of Americans Are On Terrorist Watchlisthttp://www.mintpressnews.com/startling-number-of-americans-are-on-terrorist-watchlist/194356/
http://www.mintpressnews.com/startling-number-of-americans-are-on-terrorist-watchlist/194356/#commentsWed, 23 Jul 2014 10:00:57 +0000http://www.mintpressnews.com/?p=194356Experts argue that by including so many names on the Terrorist Watchlist, it’s actually more difficult for law enforcement to investigate or apprehend real criminals.

Imam Abdul A. Muhammad of the Masjid Imam K. Ali Muslim mosque in Newark, N.J., speaks in his clothing and accessories store, regarding surveillance of the Muslim community by the New York Police Department, Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

According to a civil lawsuit made public last week, the U.S. government has added more than 1.5 million names — not individuals — to its Terrorist Watchlist in the last five years. This has sparked concern among many human rights organizations and advocacy groups, who say that the government has become too aggressive in its efforts to keep the American public safe.

“The amount of names added to the list is really startling,” said Gadeir Abbas, a staff attorney with the Council on American-Islamic Relations who has represented “dozens” of Americans on the no-fly list.

Abbas told MintPress News that the number of names on the watch list is counterproductive to the goals of the watch list, as law enforcement are now more concerned with adding names to the watch list or checking to see if someone is in the database, than engaging in “traditional criminal investigations that uncover wrongdoing.”

Watch-listing warps the mentality of law enforcement agents, Abbas says, and pushes agencies tasked with protecting the American public toward more activities related to intelligence collection instead of criminal investigations.

One of Abbas’ clients, Gulet Mohamed, a 21-year-old U.S. citizen from Alexandria, Virginia, discovered he was on a watch list in 2011, when he was told he would not be allowed to travel back to the United States after a trip to Yemen and Somalia — his country of origin. Mohamed was never charged with a terror-related offense or any other crime, which is why he is fighting his inclusion on the list.

Abbas says the number of innocent people on the list, like Mohamed, is probably extremely high because the Terrorist Screening Center, the agency responsible for determining who is on the Terrorist Watchlist, accepts 98.96 percent of all nominations to the list.

Abbas told MintPress he asked the TSC what made them reject 1.04 percent of the nominations from federal agencies, but the agency was unable to answer the question. According to the attorney, the TSC told him the electronic form agents fill out when nominating a person for inclusion on the list includes a text box where agents are required to give a reason for the rejection. But Abbas said he was told that the reason given in the text box may not actually be the real reason for a person’s exclusion from the list.

Of those included on the watch list, many are actually not suspected of being known terrorists, but are known as “non-investigative subjects.” In other words, the federal government is, as Abbas says, “literally putting people they decided not to investigate on the federal government watch list” — a matter Abbas said all American should find disconcerting because it’s proof that the “government is playing games with folks.”

“If you cannot charge someone with a crime and are not actively investigating them, they shouldn’t be on a watch list,” Abbas said. “Either investigate and charge people or leave them alone.”

Can’t take my eyes off of you…

Watch lists may not have been part of Americans’ daily vocabulary prior to Sept. 11, 2001, but they have actually existed for years — including most notably during the “Red Scare” of the 1950s. The main difference between watch lists of yesteryear and the current Terrorist Watchlist is that before 9/11, law enforcement agencies had their own watch lists and didn’t necessarily share who they were monitoring with other agencies.

Some say that the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon largely occurred due to a lack of communication between intelligence and law enforcement agencies, as three of the hijackers had been flagged for suspicious activity by some agencies, but the agencies had never shared that information with each other. For example, three 9/11 hijackers — Mohammed Atta, Ziad Jarrah and Hani Hanjour — were flagged by local or state law enforcement agencies, but the CIA’s suspicions of the three individuals were not shared with any other agency, including the FBI.

If the agencies had shared their concerns about the men, some intelligence officials argue that 9/11 could have been entirely prevented, or at least limited.

Per the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission, under the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, the Information Sharing Environment agency, also known as ISE, was created and tasked with sharing information among law enforcement, intelligence agencies and foreign affairs specialists — all in the name of national security.

Created in 2003, the TSC is responsible for overseeing the post-9/11 consolidated Terrorist Watchlist, which has various secondary watch lists — most notably, the no-fly list. The agency is also tasked with ensuring that people are not included on the watch list based solely on race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation or other First Amendment-protected activities such as speech, the exercise of religion, press, peaceful assembly or petitioning the government for redress of grievances.

The bulk of the concerns, however, rest in the fact that most people have no idea of their inclusion on the Terrorist Watchlist until they are unable to fly on an airplane, receive additional screening at the airport or are questioned more during a routine traffic stop, among other issues. Further, by the time someone learns he is on a watch list, there’s no real way for him to contest his inclusion on the list, as the federal government refuses to acknowledge whether or not an individual is truly on the list, citing national security reasons.

Abbas says that outside the Muslim community, the American public is not necessarily aware of how expansive the Terrorist Watchlist has become. Throughout the past four or five years, he continues, the watch list has increasingly been discredited, as several news reports have chronicled how the FBI abuses its authority with the list.

Real-life impact

Part of the reason the Muslim community is largely aware of the abuse of power with the watch list is because of those who have filed a lawsuit alleging that they were wrongly placed on the watch list’s no-fly sublist, almost all have been Muslim, someone who could be mistaken for being a Muslim or someone who traveled to countries where Islam is the majority faith.

Abbas says it is “absolutely critical” that the American public supports the “legal tradition of questioning secret watch lists that impose consequences” and ultimately negatively impact the lives of those on the list even though these Americans are not charged with or convicted of any crime.

For instance, Gulet Mohamed is not able to travel to Mecca for a religious pilgrimage — an important trip for those who practice Islam. Others have had to find new careers that don’t require air travel, while weddings have been called off and family reunions have been cancelled.

Additionally, those on the watch list are often isolated by those in their community, as Abbas says there is a notion that they “are a danger to America,” especially if they are Muslim, as there are many conspiracy theories floating around that Muslims are attempting to overthrow the American way of life and implement strict Islamic-based rules.

Even if someone on the watch list is not of the Islamic faith, people often don’t want to associate with those on the watch list for fear that they might also be added to the list, since associating with a “terrorist” is given as a reason by the U.S. government as why someone would be included on the list.

It’s this fear of being illogically added to the watch list that Abbas says proves the list is illegal. The federal government can’t simply designate someone as a terrorist without notifying them or allowing them to prove otherwise, he says, since that violates the due process rights awarded to Americans by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.

Lack of accountability

According to the FBI, the TSC “regularly conducts comprehensive and case-specific quality assurance reviews of its data to ensure…the records maintained in the Terrorist Screening Database are current, accurate and thorough.”

The agency reportedly updates the list daily and shares the Terrorist Screening Database with federal, state, local, territorial and tribal law enforcement and intelligence community members, as well as international partners, but since TSC cannot confirm or deny if someone is on a list, it’s difficult to know whether this list is truly and accurately audited on a regular basis.

This lack of accountability is a point of concern, as Abbas says the government has never had this kind of unaccountable authority before, especially when it comes to the no-fly list. He further points out that the list is historical in nature, since this is the first time there has been a restriction on movement for Americans — there was never a “no-boat” or “no-train” list.

In an email to MintPress, Anya Bernstein, an associate professor at SUNY Buffalo and author of “The Hidden Costs of Terrorist Watch Lists,” says that Americans should be concerned about these watch lists, even if they are not currently affected, because there is “virtually no external oversight” of who is on the list or agency accountability associated with the lists allowing those who are “irrelevant” to national security to remove themselves from the list.

Some may argue that having a few extra names on the list is not that big of an issue, but Bernstein argues otherwise.

“Having irrelevant people on these lists is not something harmless, like receiving a couple of pieces of junk mail that you can throw out. It actually places us in danger, because the avalanche of irrelevance distracts agents from actual dangers. It’s not a couple of pieces of junk mail, it’s hundreds of thousands of spam emails cluttering up your inbox, making it hard to spot the important stuff,” she wrote.

Though no one likes to learn that they were wrong or to admit that they were wrong, Bernstein speculates that if the government continues to recognize the inaccuracies in its “danger-spotting abilities,” there will only be more clutter on these watch lists, making it more difficult for agents to focus on actual threats.

Meanwhile, a Terrorist Watchlist with millions of names gives the impression that terrorist attacks are not only likely to occur, but would be devastating to multiple facets of American life. However, Bernstein says that based on actual investigations of terrorism in the U.S., “terrorist attacks are not very likely to occur in America, and the ones that are likely to occur are not catastrophic.”

According to the FBI, there’s a lot of confusion surrounding the number of people on the list. Although the Terrorist Watchlist contains more than one million “terrorist identities,” the bureau explains, there are only around 400,000 or so individuals on the list, as the watch list contains all aliases for a suspected terrorist. For example, if a suspect uses two different names and three different dates of birth, that would generate six “terrorist identities,” but they’re all only for one person.

Abbas agrees that it’s conceivable that there may be fewer individuals on the list because of the aliases, but he says that even when taking that into consideration, the number of people on the list is too high for it to be useful.

Terrorism: The biggest threat to the U.S.?

One reason Bernstein says some Americans have been so willing to allow the federal government to collect their personal information, electronically surveil them and allow large numbers of people to be put on watch lists, is because many believe that terrorism is the most pressing and serious threat facing Americans today.

Since terrorism is not as great of a threat to the U.S. as the government has made it out to be, Bernstein argues that the resources used on these “highly unreliable” watch lists are not worth it.

In her law review article “The Hidden Costs of Terrorist Watch Lists,” Bernstein points out that in 2012, the Department of Homeland Security “detained and refused entry to two British nationals en route to Los Angeles because the agency concluded that the couple’s Twitter messages suggested they were planning to engage in terrorist activity.”

But as Bernstein notes, the “terrorist activity” the two Brits tweeted about included digging up Marilyn Monroe’s grave and “destroy[ing] America,” which is slang for “party.”

“[W]e’re spending a lot of money on something, but we don’t know how it works, we don’t know whether it works, and we don’t know how to improve it,” Bernstein told MintPress. “This begins to look pretty irrational. That irrationality could be greatly reduced if the agencies that run watch lists began implementing self-assessment programs that would allow both the government and the public to assess the efficacy of the watch lists.”

Abbas disagrees that oversight and increased transparency provide the solution to the problems with the watch lists. Instead, he argues that the entire watch-listing project is a problem and proposes that instead of a no-fly list, the intelligence community should opt to pat down a truly suspicious traveler extensively before he or she boards an airplane or have the suspicious passenger travel accompanied by a member of the Federal Air Marshal Service.

In addition to targeting innocent Americans, Abbas says the no-fly list has proven to be ineffective. Those who truly want to get on a plane would likely come up with a plan to circumvent the no-fly list, he says, noting that while Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the “Underwear Bomber,” was on the no-fly list, Faisal Shahzad, the man behind a 2010 attack on Times Square, was not.

Legal challenge

As Americans begin to legally challenge the constitutionality of the watch lists, especially the no-fly list, the courts are ruling that these lists are a violation of the U.S. Constitution, as due process rights are so heavily violated.

Abbas points out that U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga, who is overseeing Gulet Mohamed’s case, has not yet issued a ruling, but has pointed to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1965 ruling, in which it decided that the Subversive Activities Control Board’s requirement that those associated with the Communist Party and other unfavorable organizations register with the U.S. Attorney General’s office was a violation of the Fifth Amendment.

Under the Fifth Amendment, an individual has the “right to remain silent” in order to avoid self-incrimination , which is what many associated with the Communist Party argued would happen if they would be forced to supply information to those who were investigating their activities. The court agreed.

The Supreme Court ruled then that the right to move about the world is so fundamental to Americans, that even at the peak of Communist hysteria, the courts didn’t deny people the ability to travel, Abbas said.

He added that the restrictions on where Americans can travel is unprecedented, but says he is encouraged that the American judicial system will hopefully change this “gross imposition” to Americans’ basic constitutional rights, especially in a post-Edward Snowden/National Security Agency revelations world.

MintPress asked the FBI and TSC to comment on this story, but our calls and emails were not returned. ISE said they have no comment on anything related to the watch list and directed us to speak with other intelligence agencies.

]]>http://www.mintpressnews.com/startling-number-of-americans-are-on-terrorist-watchlist/194356/feed/12Like NSA, Local Police Spy On Americans Without Warranthttp://www.mintpressnews.com/like-nsa-local-policy-spy-on-americans-without-warrant/194295/
http://www.mintpressnews.com/like-nsa-local-policy-spy-on-americans-without-warrant/194295/#commentsTue, 22 Jul 2014 10:00:05 +0000http://www.mintpressnews.com/?p=194295Stingrays and other cell surveillance tools have been used in the U.S. for years without the knowledge of the public or even defense attorneys and judges.

An inforgrapic demonstrating how a Stingray device works via a USA Today investigation

Long before the National Security Agency was caught electronically surveilling Americans without first obtaining a warrant, local law enforcement agencies in about 15 states had been using technology to collect information from nearby cellular devices — also without obtaining a warrant.

Known as a Stingray, the suitcase-sized surveillance tool imitates the abilities of a cell phone tower and essentially forces all cellular devices within a one-mile radius to connect to the “tower.” When the devices connect to the artificial cellular tower, all data being sent to and from the devices is fed into a police database.

Because it is small, a Stingray is often installed into law enforcement vehicles so that the device can easily be transferred from neighborhood to neighborhood in order to collect information.

Each device costs between $250,000 and $400,000. Some local police departments are not able to foot the bill for the technology, though, so they borrow the funds from state surveillance units. However, departments usually receive help purchasing the technology from the federal government, via anti-terror grants.

The technology has been used for years, unknown to not only the public, but also many defense attorneys and judges. For example, in Sacramento, California, a local ABC affiliate recently conducted an investigation into use of the technology and found that the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office and Sacramento Superior Court judges had no idea Stingrays or similar surveillance tools were actively being used in Sacramento.

No one knew that the technology was being used partly because police officers were not required to obtain a warrant before using it. When the officers are asked to disclose to a judge or in a warrant request where they obtained incriminating information, they were instructed by the U.S. Marshal Service to explain that they “received the information from a confidential source.”

Last month, it was revealed that the Marshal Service had actually instructed law enforcement officials in Florida, via email, to deceive judges and defendants about where the officers obtained the information they had collected with the Stingray technology.

Currently, Stingray technology is used by police departments in Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin, but because of the secrecy surrounding the application of the surveillance equipment, it’s definitely possible that officers in other states could also be using the technology.

According to documents obtained by the Sacramento-based News10 team, including an invoice from the Harris Corporation, which sells the bulk of the Stingray technology to law enforcement agencies, every agency that purchases the device must sign a nondisclosure agreement stating that the “capabilities” of the technology are “not for public knowledge.”

News10 also obtained an invoice from Harris Corporation showing that the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department, who investigative journalist Thom Jensen says couldn’t get their story straight, had purchased a high-powered antenna that would extend the range of the Stingray technology to more than one mile. (Exactly how far the “Harpoon” technology amplifies the Stingray’s capabilities is not known.)

Law enforcement agencies often cite public records exemptions as reasons why they cannot disclose information about the use of the technology to the public. Jensen says the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department cited a law designed to protect railroads as a reason why the department would be exempt from answering any questions about the Stingrays, including confirming whether or not the department has and uses the technology.

While law enforcement agencies also refuse to share why they use the technology, documents obtained by News10 show that officers in Oakland, California, often use the technology to gather information related to a range of crimes, including investigations into murders, child abductions and fugitives.

For many privacy advocates, the concern about the widespread use of the surveillance technology is that it constitutes a violation of Americans’ constitutional rights. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization advocating for digital rights, wrote in 2012, “[T]hese devices allow the government to conduct broad searches amounting to ‘general warrants,’ the exact type of search the Fourth Amendment was written to prevent.”

“A Stingray — which could potentially be beamed into all the houses in one neighborhood looking for a particular signal — is the digital version of the pre-Revolutionary war practice of British soldiers going door-to-door, searching Americans’ homes without rationale or suspicion, let alone judicial approval.”

Since the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 last month that warrants must be obtained in order to search a cellphone, privacy advocates hope that this is a step in the right direction toward protecting Americans freedoms and rights.

“I don’t think that these devices should never be used, but at the same time, you should clearly be getting a warrant,” said Alan Butler of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

]]>http://www.mintpressnews.com/like-nsa-local-policy-spy-on-americans-without-warrant/194295/feed/10UAV Enthusiasts: Drone Photography Is Not A Crimehttp://www.mintpressnews.com/uav-enthusiasts-drone-photography-is-not-a-crime/194195/
http://www.mintpressnews.com/uav-enthusiasts-drone-photography-is-not-a-crime/194195/#commentsMon, 21 Jul 2014 10:00:04 +0000http://www.mintpressnews.com/?p=194195For several drone photography enthusiasts, their own footage has been their best defense against spurious charges.

This December 2013 photo, taken by a camera mounted on a drone airccraft. Police are cracking down on civilian use of the hobby craft, despite their legality. (AP/Pedro Rivera)

David Beesmer was arrested by a New York state trooper on Tuesday and charged with a felony — unlawful surveillance in the second degree — for recording aerial video footage of the Mid Hudson Medical Group building in Ulster, New York, which just opened last Monday.

Beesmer was in the area because he had taken his mother to a doctor’s appointment at the hospital. He posted on Facebook that he wanted to fly his aerial drone in the area because he was “so very proud of this facility and that someone has done something positive with the property that has been abandoned for many years.”

But since Beesmer was reportedly flying his $1,300 drone between 10 and 15 feet from the windows of examination rooms at the medical facility — close enough for patients and medical staff to notice it — his use of the equipment became an issue.

According to New York state law, an individual is prohibited from using a camera to view or record people who are dressing or undressing themselves in a place where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy, such as bedrooms, changing rooms, restrooms and hotels, or to record underneath the clothing of a person to view or record “sexual or other intimate parts of such person.”

As Beesmer has proven with the aerial footage he recorded, the facility’s tinted windows ensured that he would not be recording anyone inside the building, and in the police report, the arresting officer never claimed that Beesmer was trying to record patients who may have been undressing. The only claim police made was that Beesmer was recording the building.

Beesmer reportedly didn’t film anything that would be prohibited from being recorded under Ney York’s “peeping Tom” law, but was still arrested. Beesmer has since been released from jail, but was asked to appear in court on a later date.

“I truly realize that I should have asked first but did not think it would be an issue….only to discover that it sure is,” Beesmer posted on Facebook.

“I will not stop droning….this is the wave of the future…and I WILL be a part of it,” he concluded.

Though many see his case as a relatively simple one, there is a concern among some police reform groups that law enforcement often acts too quickly to take unmanned aerial vehicles down, as police officers don’t often like being filmed or recorded while on duty, although the practice is completely legal.

In addition to Beesmer’s recent arrest, the New York City Police Department arrested two people — Remy Castro and Wilkins Mendoza — on felony endangerment charges for allegedly flying a DJI Phantom in the path of a NYPD helicopter pilot, who allegedly had to veer off course to avoid being struck by the drone.

But according to air traffic control recordings, the NYPD pilot not only saw the drone flying near the George Washington Bridge, but chose to fly the helicopter at the UAV instead of around it. Castro told the New York Daily News that the drone recordings also prove that the two men were not following the NYPD helicopter, but that the helicopter was following the drone.

Andrew Meyer covers unmanned aerial vehicle photography stories for the website Photography Is Not A Crime. He says the fact that Beesmer, Castro and Mendoza’s videos served as proof of their innocence will hopefully help police officers understand that “aerial photography is not [necessarily] a crime.”

Meyer also recommended that prosecutors in these cases pursue “a more accurate charge — and prosecute the arresting officers who filed a false police report,” as Beesmer notes that at least in his case, the police report filed by the arresting officer didn’t match the report filed by the fire chief or what is seen and heard in the recording.

]]>http://www.mintpressnews.com/uav-enthusiasts-drone-photography-is-not-a-crime/194195/feed/1House Approves Marijuana Industry’s Request For Banking Accesshttp://www.mintpressnews.com/house-approves-marijuana-industrys-request-banking-access/194133/
http://www.mintpressnews.com/house-approves-marijuana-industrys-request-banking-access/194133/#commentsFri, 18 Jul 2014 09:20:22 +0000http://www.mintpressnews.com/?p=194133Shut out of banking services, marijuana-related businesses in states where the substance is legal operate as cash-only businesses, but that may be changing.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday voted 231-192 in favor of a bipartisan-backed piece of legislation that blocks the Treasury Department from using federal funds to penalize banks or other financial institutions for providing services to marijuana businesses in states where the substance is legal.

The amendment to the financial services budget bill was introduced by Reps. Denny Heck of Washington, Dana Rohrabacher of California, Ed Perlmutter of Colorado, and Barbara Lee of California, and essentially gives the go-ahead for the banking industry to offer its services to marijuana businesses.

The legislation also bars the Internal Revenue Service, an agency within the Treasury Department, from auditing and treating marijuana businesses as criminal enterprises and forcing these businesses to pay taxes on their gross revenue, which is what is required of cartels and other large criminal enterprises under Tax Code Section 280e.

This most recent House-passed legislation may not be “as flashy a win as some other drug policy reforms of recent years,” said Law Enforcement Against Prohibition’s executive director Major Neill Franklin (Ret.), but “banking regulations have been one of the most significant obstacles to creating a well-run, safe legal marketplace.”

For years those in the legal marijuana industry have been asking the federal government for approval to be regulated by the banking industry so that, like other legitimate businesses, customers could use credit card services and business owners would not be forced to pay employees in cash, as they would be able to deposit money in a bank, write checks, etc.

Due to marijuana’s status as an illegal drug on the federal level, federally insured banks are currentlyprohibited from knowingly handling any marijuana-related money. Banks can’t even help marijuana-related businesses move money to a safe location using an armored vehicle, and fear of money laundering charges has prompted many financial institutions to deny services to marijuana-related businesses in states where the substance is legal.

As a result, marijuana businesses are forced to operate solely using cash, which legalization advocates say not only creates logistical issues, but is a huge public safety issue.

Mitch Morrissey, district attorney for Denver, said that what makes dispensaries particularly attractive to thieves is how much money a thief can make. “You hit a 7-Eleven, you’ll get 20 bucks,” Morrisseysaid. “You hit a dispensary, you’ll get $300,000 on a good day.”

News reports on the crimes associated with operating cash-only businesses have prompted some, including Morrissey, to call for an end to marijuana legalization. But as many marijuana legalization advocates point out, dispensaries are not robbed or burglarized any more than liquor stores, banks or pharmacies, and they say that given the number of dispensaries, the crime rate is particularly low at these businesses.

Legalization advocates argue that the solution to the cash-related crime problems is not making marijuana illegal once again, but allowing marijuana businesses to work with banks so they are no longer operating as cash-only businesses.

“No matter how you feel about taxing and regulating legal cannabis,” it’s in no one’s best interest to operate a business exclusively in cash, Taylor West, deputy director of the National Cannabis Industry Association, told MintPress News earlier this year. She added that as more people become aware of the large amount of cash at these dispensaries, crime could get worse.

“This is a huge victory for those who care about the smart regulation and control of marijuana,” Franklin, of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, said when talking about the legislation. “What we’re seeing is not just that one of the most gridlocked Congresses in history is able to pass marijuana reforms, we’re seeing that both Democrats and Republicans think of these reforms as smart, politically viable options to a failed drug war.”

Mike Liszewski, government affairs director for Americans for Safe Access, which has been lobbying Congress on these banking measures, said this vote not only sends a message to the Obama administration that they should “stop meddling in state and local marijuana laws,” but that the U.S. Senate should vote to respect medical marijuana laws across the country as well.

Currently, 23 states are recognized by legalization groups as having a medical marijuana program, though it should be noted that not all programs are yet in effect. A handful of other states have also passed legislation legalizing cannabidiol oil, or CBD oil, a form of medical marijuana known among the public as a strain that helps children who have seizures.

]]>http://www.mintpressnews.com/house-approves-marijuana-industrys-request-banking-access/194133/feed/4Swedish Court: Charges Against Julian Assange Standhttp://www.mintpressnews.com/swedish-court-charges-against-julian-assange-stand/194090/
http://www.mintpressnews.com/swedish-court-charges-against-julian-assange-stand/194090/#commentsThu, 17 Jul 2014 10:00:36 +0000http://www.mintpressnews.com/?p=194090Swedish court reaffirms legal basis of warrant that’s kept the WikiLeaks founder holed up as an asylum-seeker in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for two years.

A figure depicts Julian Assange on a cross on top of a supporter of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange during a vigil outside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to mark his two years in refuge at the embassy, Thursday, June 19, 2014. (AP/Sang Tan)

On Wednesday, lawyers for WikiLeaks co-founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange asked that the Swedish government’s call “for the detention of Julian Assange to be lifted, effective immediately.” In Stockholm District Court, they argued that the order, which was issued in 2010, restricts Assange’s civil rights and cannot be enforced while he is at the Embassy of Ecuador in London.

“It is unreasonable for this arrest warrant to continue, seeing as it has been going on so long and how much suffering it has caused Julian Assange,” said Tomas Olsson, a member of Assange’s defense team.

However, the judge presiding over the case disagreed and denied the request. In her ruling, the judge explained that “there is still probable cause concerning the suspicions directed towards [Assange] (unlawful coercion, sexual molestation and rape, less serious incident) and that there is still a risk that he will fail to appear or in some other way avoid participation in the investigation and the following proceedings.”

Two women went to the Swedish police four years after having sex with Assange, asking if police would be able to compel him to take an HIV test. According to WikiLeaks, the women’s reasons for requesting Assange get an HIV test got twisted, and police then began investigating Assange for allegedly raping the two women.

Throughout the last four years, Assange has been questioned several times by Swedish authorities about the case, but has never been charged with a crime. The arrest warrant issued for Assange is related to Swedish officials’ interest in talking to Assange further. The two women have also come forward to say that the police made up the charges against Assange and that they only wanted him to get tested.

During the court proceedings on Wednesday, Assange’s defense team argued that law enforcement officials have had the opportunity to question Assange during the past four years. They could have even done so at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where Assange has sought asylum for the past two years, Assange’s lawyers argued, but the Swedish officials insisted that Assange come to Sweden.

The defense said that the sole reason Assange won’t go back to Sweden is because if he leaves the embassy in London he will be extradited to the United States, where he is wanted for disclosing confidential government information such as diplomatic cables and documents related to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Assange and many of his supporters believe that if he is sent to the U.S., he will likely be executed. Despite these concerns, the prosecution argued, “There are several reasons we haven’t made hearings in London.”

“This kind of allegation don’t work well for leaving public defenders or prosecutors on foreign soil, and we can’t apply force for taking DNA samples and similar if we consider it necessary,” the Swedish prosecutors argued. “Besides, we can’t hold a trial in London.”

During the court proceedings, the prosecution pressured Assange to return to Sweden for questioning, and said that Assange’s refusal to come to Sweden is evidence that he is a flight risk.

The defense responded to the allegations that Assange is intentionally evading Swedish authorities, pointing out that a separate arrest warrant is what has really kept Assange holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for the past two years.

Though the judge ultimately sided with the prosecution, Per Samuelson, another one of Assange’s defense attorneys, said he plans to study the decision in detail and then “write a juicy, toxic appeal” to a higher court.

“Our legal arguments are solid and powerful,” Samuelsson said. “That they didn’t work could be because the judge didn’t give herself enough time to think.”

Even if Sweden had decided to drop its detention order against Assange on Wednesday, if the journalist leaves the Ecuadorean Embassy, he would be arrested by the British police permanently stationed outside for violating his bail conditions and seeking asylum at the embassy.

It’s believed that Assange would be handed over to U.S. officials shortly after being detained by the British police.

]]>http://www.mintpressnews.com/swedish-court-charges-against-julian-assange-stand/194090/feed/2Texas On Trial For Violating Voting Rights Of Blacks, Latinoshttp://www.mintpressnews.com/texas-on-trial-for-violating-voting-rights-of-blacks-latinos/194086/
http://www.mintpressnews.com/texas-on-trial-for-violating-voting-rights-of-blacks-latinos/194086/#commentsThu, 17 Jul 2014 10:00:13 +0000http://www.mintpressnews.com/?p=194086One analyst says the case could turn Texas into a “purple state” by shifting power away from predominantly white conservatives and giving left-leaning voters more of a say.

Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Texas, walks out of the U.S. Courthouse, Monday, July 14, 2014, in San Antonio. The U.S. Justice Department told judges in a trial that began Monday that Texas lawmakers carefully crafted electoral maps marginalizing minority voters despite the state’s exploding Hispanic population in a deliberate effort to racially discriminate and protect conservative incumbents. (AP/Eric Gay)

Newly released emails between members of the Texas Republican Party from November 2010 confirm what black and Latino voters in Texas have argued for decades: Changes to political districts in the state are done in a strategic and discriminatory manner to ensure that the votes cast by minority groups — typically for Democratic officials — would be outweighed by Anglo-cast votes for Republican candidates.

Manipulating political boundaries in order to favor one party, or gerrymandering, may be a legal political strategy that both Democrats and Republicans have used, but redistricting is not legal if the voting rights of groups of certain groups of people are intentionally hindered.

In other words, it would be legal for Texas to lessen the influence of the Latino and black vote if it happens incidentally as part of efforts to ensure that Republicans maintain control of the state. But redistricting cannot be done in order to dilute the strength of the minority vote, which is what Latino and black groups allege has occurred in Texas.

On June 17, 2011, individual voters in the state of Texas, together with organizations representing blacks and Latinos, filed a lawsuit against the state of Texas on behalf of more than 9 million Latinos in the state. Filed in a federal district court in San Antonio, those filing the suit hoped that the courts would fix the “horrific attack on democracy and fair play,” said Lydia Camarillo, vice president of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project.

“Texas was forced in 2001 and 2006 to redraw statewide redistricting plans because of its failure to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act,” said Nina Perales, vice president of litigation for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, or MALDEF, explaining that this is why “[w]e have turned to the courts again to make sure Texas follows the law in the current redistricting cycle.”

Henry Flores, a political science research professor at St. Mary’s University who has been involved in representing the minority voters, says that Texas Republicans have been drawing districts to ensure that minority voters are unable to elect a candidate of their choice. For example, in 2011, Republicans tried to divide the highly Latino populated south side of San Antonio into three different districts in order to weaken the influence of the Latino vote.

Discrimination at the polls

Last June, in Shelby County v. Holder, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional the provision in the Voting Rights Act that required federal officials to review proposed redistricting maps for all states in order to ensure the maps were not drawn with the intent to discriminate against various groups — meaning states no longer had to submit plans to the federal government. Because of this ruling, many thought this would be an open and close case for the state of Texas.

Essentially, the ruling meant that Texas and the 14 other — predominantly Southern — states with a history of discriminating against minority voters, no longer needed to obtain federal approval before changing the way elections are held, including creating new political districts.

However, since Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in voting based on race or language minority status, was left intact, unaffected by the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision, along with other provisions in the Voting Rights Act that prohibit voter discrimination, the plaintiffs have a chance to win.

While it may have seemed like the odds were stacked against the minority voters, the new emails are being hailed as the “smoking gun” that proves intentional discrimination did occur with the 2011 and 2013 redistricting maps in Texas, giving black and Latino voters in Texas the edge they needed in this case.

“Smoking gun”

According to a July 14, 2014, report in Salon, on Nov. 17, 2010, Eric Opiela, a Republican rancher who served as campaign adviser to then-Speaker of the Texas House Joe Straus and who is currently a candidate for Texas’ agriculture commissioner, sent an email to Gerard Interiano, who was working as an associate general counsel.

In the email, Opiela allegedly wrote that he was going to become the man who spoke “on behalf of the Republican Congressmen from Texas,” as he had been tasked with leading the efforts to redraw the state’s political districts in the weeks prior to sending the email.

While it’s not unusual for lawmakers or their teams to ask for help when taking on such a large project, what the minority voting-rights plaintiffs found concerning was that Opiela asked Interiano for demographic information about Hispanic voters in Texas, as well as their voting patterns.

In the Nov. 17, 2010, email, Opiela allegedly wrote, “These metrics would be useful to identify the ‘nudge factor’ by which one can analyze which census blocks, when added to a particular district [they] help pull the district’s Total Hispanic pop … to majority status, but leave the Spanish surname RV [registered voters] and TO [turnout] the lowest.”

Interiano responded two days later, allegedly saying, “I will gladly help with this Eric but you’re going to have to explain to me in layman’s terms.”

Opiela responded to Interiano, allegedly explaining that his “Optimal Hispanic Republican Voting Strength” strategy, or “OHRVS,” would be “a measure of how Hispanic, and[,] at the same time[,] Republican we can make a particular census block.”

During a deposition hearing on May 15, 2014, MALDEF’s Perales posed questions about the redistricting to Clare Dyer, who helped gather the demographic information on Texan voters for Interiano as part of her job as a mapping and redistricting researcher for the Texas Legislative Council, a state agency, Dyer reportedly admitted that it appeared Opiela was intentionally discriminating against minority voters.

Dyer said she took Opiela’s emails to mean that “[H]e’s trying to shore up — well, he says that — shore up districts so he can get — have them appear to be high Hispanic, but low Spanish surname registered voters. … You could give the appearance of having a Hispanic majority district, but it wouldn’t have the capability to elect — for the Hispanics in the district — to elect the person of their choice.”

It was the testimony of people like Dyer, combined with the emails themselves, that prompted David R. Richards, who represented minority voters in 2012’s Perez v. Perry — a case that resulted in federal judges drawing a new more Democrat-friendly map after voters contested the 2011 maps approved by state Republicans and approved by Gov. Rick Perry — to agree that these emails are the smoking gun the plaintiffs needed.

“You look like you preserve the vitality of a Hispanic district because of the raw numbers but the reality is you have — because of substituting out the high turnout with low turnout — hollowed out the core of the district and weakened the Democratic component of the district,” said Richards, who is also the ex-husband of the late former Democratic Governor of Texas Ann Richards.

Federal interest

In August 2013, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Department of Justice would help represent the plaintiffs in their lawsuit against the state of Texas, the Texas secretary of state and the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Shelby County v. Holder essentially reversed the federal court’s previous ruling in 2012 that Texas was unable to prove that its 2011 redistricting plans and voter identification law were not discriminatory.

In a statement, the DOJ explained that the Texas redistricting maps and voter ID law, known as the strictest in the nation, were not only violations of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, but were also in violation of the 14th and 15th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which essentially guarantees American citizens the right and ability to vote.

“We will not allow the Supreme Court’s recent decision to be interpreted as open season for states to pursue measures that suppress voting rights,” Holder said. “The Department will take action against jurisdictions that attempt to hinder access to the ballot box, no matter where it occurs.

“We will keep fighting aggressively to prevent voter disenfranchisement. We are determined to use all available authorities, including remaining sections of the Voting Rights Act, to guard against discrimination and, where appropriate, to ask federal courts to require preclearance of new voting changes.”

Naturally, Gov. Perry was not pleased that the power of the federal government was now involved in a lawsuit against his state and himself in his professional capacity as governor of Texas. He told The New York Times that the Justice Department’s involvement was a violation of the 10th Amendment, which grants states the ability to create their own laws under some circumstances.

“The filing of endless litigation in an effort to obstruct the will of the people of Texas is what we have come to expect from Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama,” Perry said. “We will continue to defend the integrity of our elections against this administration’s blatant disregard for the 10th Amendment.”

Evidence of discrimination

Michael Li serves as counsel for the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, part of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law, and is involved in issues related to redistricting, voting rights and elections. In a recent blog post for the Brennan Center, Li described the issue and agreed that the redistricting maps were intentionally discriminatory against black and Latino voters.

During a discussion on Texas Public Radio on Monday, Li expanded on his blog post, explaining that between 2000 and 2010, the population in Texas increased by 4.3 million people. Ninety percent of the new Texans were non-Anglos, and 7 out of 10 were Latino. Yet Li says that electorally, minorities are still struggling to have their voices heard.

“It is remarkable how careful and strategic redistrictors can be,” Li said, when they swap out the number of high-voters with low-voters to make it appear as if there are actually more Latino voters in a district, but because the additional voters are those people who are less likely to vote, the minority voters are put at a disadvantage. This, he explained, is illegal.

The first part of the trial is currently underway and is expected to last through July 19. There are at least two other phases of the trial that will occur throughout the rest of the year, as the three-person federal panel presiding over this trial decided that due to the complexity of the case, it needed to be broken up.

The second part of the case is expected to begin Aug. 11 and run through Aug. 15 or 16. The third phase has not been scheduled yet, and a fourth phase may be necessary if the court decides it would like more information.

Regardless of who the federal court sides with in Texas, Li said he expects this case will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court, as the loser will likely file an appeal. Because it’s not clear when the panel will make a ruling on the case, and since the loser will likely file an appeal, Li forecast that the 2014 election will not be affected by the case, but it will have an impact on the 2016 election.

Like most cases that come out of Texas, Li said, this is very important because it not only tests the legal power of a little-known provision in the Voting Rights Act, but would essentially shift power away from predominantly white conservatives in Texas and give left-leaning voters more of a say, which could turn Texas into a “purple” state.

Remembering the democratic process

President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law in order to preserve what Johnson called “the dignity of man, and the decency of democracy.” The unprecedented law was seen as a victory of millions of Americans who, as Attorney General Holder pointed out in a speech last year, braved “dogs and fire hoses, billy clubs and baseball bats, bullets and bombs — to secure those rights which were theirs as Americans.

“This law empowered the U.S. Department of Justice to fight unjust attempts to abridge voting rights and restrict access to the franchise. And, for nearly five decades, it provided robust, enforceable safeguards that helped protect the right of every American to cast a ballot — unencumbered by discriminatory rules, regulations, and procedures that, intentionally or not, discourage and disenfranchise.”

But since the conservative-majority Supreme Court ruled the way it did last year, many Republican-controlled states have ramped up their attempts to impose new limits on voting — largely in the form of voter ID laws. Republicans often argue that the law is not a form of discrimination, but rather a necessary provision that will help combat voter fraud.

But the forms of ID accepted are often those that minority voters are least likely to have. For example, in Texas, gun licenses would be listed as an acceptable form of identification, but a student ID would not.

Other states that the federal government has reportedly been monitoring include Florida and North Carolina. If the DOJ is successful in the Texas case, it may decide to take on voting laws it finds concerning in those states as well.